Topic: If was pianoteq to say it... people wouldn't forgive.

I know I'm comparing quite different things, but I want to show how people are more or less critic depending of the product.

Pianoteq made great advances but still have hard critic people to spot anything. For other side TV industry created display with a whole bunch of deffects (distortions at angle, motion blur, clipped whites, crushed shadows, low response time, low refreshing rate, uneven light distribution, faded look) and we don't hear much complains from consumers.

Guess what, I found a great inconsistence of TV manufacturer's claims. They used to say their LED TVs was great and with 178 degree angle view.
Now they created a thing called Nano Cell :

Now, to promote Nano Cell they show it as having 120 degree angle, and compare to the conventional  LED TVs showing LED TVs as having something probably less than 40 degree of view angle:

PunBB bbcode test


But... Now look what they use to say a couple of years ago about LED TV :

PunBB bbcode test

Funny... contraditory... isn't it???
To promote theis "less worse" new product, they changed things and now are considering angle view as a view without much distortion, while a couple of years ago they considered angle view as a angle you could view the image, despite a lot of disgusting distortions it would present at such angles.

For other side, products like pianoteq have a public much more open to make critics and demand fixes. I ask why...
Why consumers of music instruments are detail oriented while consumers of TV accept any crap and any lie???

I'm two years without watch TV, since I do not accept LCD/LED or any slim TV with distortions of angle, of contrast, loss dynamic range, faded look, extra blur in motion etc... I promisse myself I would never watch a entire film in a LCD/LED/OLED/Q-LED TV.

Last edited by Beto-Music (20-10-2019 21:06)

Re: If was pianoteq to say it... people wouldn't forgive.

I concur with you, Beto-Music, and from my deleted post.  Some views are narrow.

About any of the questions, I feel more determined to find answers!

Pianoteq 8 Studio Bundle, Pearl malletSTATION EM1, Roland (DRUM SOUND MODULE TD-30, HandSonic 10, AX-1), Akai EWI USB, Yamaha DIGITAL PIANO P-95, M-Audio STUDIOPHILE BX5, Focusrite Saffire PRO 24 DSP.

Re: If was pianoteq to say it... people wouldn't forgive.

I always enjoy seeing how you think Beto. Totally see what you mention in the market.

Maybe there are more similarities though in both markets.

Rewinding to the 90s for example (before any mainstream type of market beyond CRT monitors existed), a typical 'big' TV would be considered tiny by many now with their wall mounted 50inch things.

But the crux, definitely was, few of us watching that little screen in those times were thinking about "I wish this was bigger or better from wider angles"

I think it was more social back then, family and friends gathering around a virtual camp fire. The "being together" was key to that experience - beyond just being a background noise to keep company, probably very rarely the preferred tool of a deep cinema buff.

When we really wanted to see things at their best, then cinema was an enjoyable night out, again still often social.

Many of these same human things persist, although many markets are arguably not so vertical these days - or where tall niches exist, these are not so much defining something approaching a mainstream size now (like VR - always, even since the 90s been "coming soon to every home and theatre" but always seems still niche although remains compelling).

Now - here comes the fussy home TV market

Nowadays, like with virtual pianos (including early sample offerings like the lovely old Ensoniq and more), the general market has been saturated with varying and always improving choices. We I suppose 'made do' because nothing yet was better on the market - although the expected trajectory was always up. Each new keyboard purchase was expected to bring something more dynamic, or versatile, realistic etc.

At some point - the TV at home becomes closer to a "good quality cinematic" experience (not same but of that order, to many consumers, not all).

Likewise at some point - the virtual piano like Pianoteq's becomes closer to a "good quality recording" or a fine alternative to a real piano, esp. at home.. but also for professionals.

There are professionals working in TV and cinema and they may be fussy with TVs but maybe we just don't see their forums.

There are definitely many professionals using Pianoteq, largely quietly and without fussing and there's also enthusiasts who've been mesmerized by the future possibilities in this space for decades.

So, in the end maybe there's more overlap that we hear about - don't know if there's a good Venn diagram or something which would be able to explain what I mean, but I do love thinking about these sorts of things.

Anyway that's how I'm thinking because of reading your ideas.

Pianoteq Studio Bundle (Pro plus all instruments)  - Kawai MP11 digital piano - Yamaha HS8 monitors

Re: If was pianoteq to say it... people wouldn't forgive.

Beto Music.
Expectation bias is a powerful marketing tool for the sample instrument producers.
The VST market is similar to the audiophile market, less like the TV market.
People are naturally suspicious, especially of something created entirely through physical modelling, sounds created within the computer - that cannot be keeping it real surely?
I imagine there will always be people that will want the sample versions simply because the sounds are recordings of real pianos.


I can understand someone being hypercritical about flatscreens, especially the LCD display types,  but the best quality plasma screens were much better and can be picked up for half nothing today. - some of which won't be knackered, provided they were only used as spare room sets or so on.
If you were feeling flush a properly calibrated OLED should be fine for a picky videophile, but you only have the choice of large and expensive.

Consumer TV and music production are very different markets, so different in fact it is hardly worth comparing. The virtual piano market is hypercritical (partly professional), the average TV buyer OTOH is not so picky, they invarably just want something large as they can afford with the best contrast they can afford (if they even consider the latter at the time of purchase).
Genuinely professional video displays can be eye wateringly expensive but the differences can be big there too. 

If you compare the best CRTs with the best OLEDs and Plasmas (RIP plasma, consumers didn't appreciate you enough) you should find a worthy panel that roundly outperforms those CRTs with HD material.

Properly calibrated the best LCDs aren't that bad either (if you don't watch them at a stupid distance off axis) -certainly this attitude that you think they are unwatchable leads me to believe you haven't seen a really good display properly calibrated with good HD material. The difference between cheap sets and premium models is still substantial and the difference between a set out of the box and nicely calibrated isn't even funny - same with computer monitors.

Re: If was pianoteq to say it... people wouldn't forgive.

Thanks for the imput guys.

Well, a campfire don't get colder at lower angle, as it's 360 degree wide ;-)

About calibration... yeah... people say that to me all the time, but they forgot how bad a LCD/LED looks if calibrated to remove clipping and crushing. It look wasshed. Once a relative was with a LCD monitor and a CRT TV, both connected top the same channel, a sport channel if I remamber well. The CRT was glossy with all details of dynamic range, while LCD was mutted, and the LCD always turned clipped if he tried to make it look better. After many and many minutes it was useless, since compared to the CRT it was horrible, despite have higher resolution for pixels. For me that was one of the most disgusting thing of the world, while other people apparently didn't care. I will never understand such people.

A 4K Samsung LED TV, with great reviiews of consumers on Amazon.com, for me looked like garbage, and calibration was useless, even it having gamma adjust to try to get more details from shadows. Even with maximum back light setting, high contrast, the image still don't look vivid to me, and have white clipping. Remove the white clipping and you get a lifeless image. For other side, a 29 inch Sony Trinitron had great contrast, dynamic, did not clipp or crush details, had no motion blur.

I WILL NEVER ACCEPT LCD/LED TVs NEVER !!!
OLED also use to have some motion blur or stuttery. Costs near 3x more, lasts 1/2 of a LED, so in the end it's like cost 6 times more. And it also have burn in effect.
Plasma looks good, but creates burn in effects, so you can't watch movied with black bars or use for web navigation.
QLED (quantum dots) also have view angle problems and motion blur and clipping. In the end it's kust a LCD with very micorscopic crystals as filters to enahnce colors a bit.

Now LG came with a thing called nano cell, and to bring it top spot they showd the new angle view and the old (now the old is narrow while in old times they said it was 178 degree). And it have motion blur, since they add filter to try harp portion of the image that get motion, but we know that it's a waste, since sharp a very blur image prior to blur do not real make much difference.

HDR it's a lie, since it only works with HDR prepared video, while older videos will look worse than in CRT (fro dynamic and health glossy). Nut manufacturers put the TV DEMO running HDR, and people think it's nice, but then arrive in home and the non-HDR video will look murky, faded, unless they clipand crush things.

IPS it's another lie, since it still get darker and faded as angles of view increase, but the darkning and fading happen in a more homgen way. ANd if look by close distance the edges and borders looks darker than the center.

And 4K (or way worse to 8K) it's a lie. ANother lie...  Wel, to start most films are finished in 2k, and the 4K editions are interpolations wiuth some sharpening, to create a fake 4K. It looks somehow better than 1020p because the compression kill details in 1080p, and for 4K the details killed will be for a smaller pixel.
And if you get close enough to see all 4k details you will be too close, making the center quite brither than the corners, a uneven lightr distribution. This disturbes me even for a PC monitor, since the sides are always darker then the center, and if youy move you head to the side (slide) the side (now cenbter for your eyes) will became brighter than the center and than the another side. A mess...

Now for a 8K TV... to start it will be no much better than a uncompressed 4K, since they imagine no ne will be so close to TV and will reate a compression and bitrate based on that, that will kill most details between 4K and 8K resolution. And people will never look to this TV close enough to see the details (even if the signal digital had it).

That's why I came to the conclusion this ibndustry of home video it's a huge bull s...

Still waiting, in 21 century, that someone creates a digital TV that do not get on my nerves !!!!

But even a TV free from such anoying things wouldn't be enough, since all TV chanels have digital artifacts of video compression, poor bitrate, banding... It's anoyning. Even most blu-ray disks have some of it.

Last edited by Beto-Music (25-10-2019 16:25)

Re: If was pianoteq to say it... people wouldn't forgive.

Beto-Music wrote:

Thanks for the imput guys.

Well, a campfire don't get colder at lower angle, as it's 360 degree wide ;-)

About calibration... yeah... people say that to me all the time, but they forgot how bad a LCD/LED looks if calibrated to remove clipping and crushing. It look wasshed. Once a relative was with a LCD monitor and a CRT TV, both connected top the same channel, a sport channel if I remamber well. The CRT was glossy with all details of dynamic range, while LCD was mutted, and the LCD always turned clipped if he tried to make it look better. After many and many minutes it was useless, since compared to the CRT it was horrible, despite have higher resolution for pixels. For me that was one of the most disgusting thing of the world, while other people apparently didn't care. I will never understand such people.

Led Backlit LCDs (and cold cathode types) vary drastically in quality. It sounds like you made your mind up pretty quickly. I can understand based on in store comparisons from large retailers, or poorly set up TVs, or poor overpriced models.

Beto-Music wrote:

A 4K Samsung LED TV, with great reviiews of consumers on Amazon.com, for me looked like garbage, and calibration was useless, even it having gamma adjust to try to get more details from shadows. Even with maximum back light setting, high contrast, the image still don't look vivid to me, and have white clipping. Remove the white clipping and you get a lifeless image. For other side, a 29 inch Sony Trinitron had great contrast, dynamic, did not clipp or crush details, had no motion blur.

Never liked the Samsung models I have seen -regardless of calibration they have too much red push - turning this down individually highlights why they use too much red push. LG based panels are so much more natural in this regard.  Panasonic LCDs use LG panels.  Samsungs tend to have more apparent black level, not real contrast.

I'm not a fan of 4K for the sake of it either. I would rather have a set with better motion reproduction and contrast than more resolution on a cheap model. Unfortunately that's not the way the world works - much like the digital camera market consumers have been sold on more resolution being automatically better, despite creating issues for the small sensors in more affordable cameras.

Increasing contrast on the TV to maximum won't achieve the best contrast, far from it, even more so for the backlight. Actually backlight at maximum usually makes a set look as bad as possible. For optimal calibration typically the back light needs to be near the bottom of the scale.

   

Beto-Music wrote:

I WILL NEVER ACCEPT LCD/LED TVs NEVER !!!

Fair enough, your call. There are good models out there. Keep to HD channels.

Beto-Music wrote:

OLED also use to have some motion blur or stuttery. Costs near 3x more, lasts 1/2 of a LED, so in the end it's like cost 6 times more. And it also have burn in effect.
Plasma looks good, but creates burn in effects, so you can't watch movied with black bars or use for web navigation.
QLED (quantum dots) also have view angle problems and motion blur and clipping. In the end it's kust a LCD with very micorscopic crystals as filters to enahnce colors a bit.

Quantum dot is just a marketing name for their high end back lit LED LCD. Sure it is better than their regular LCDs.

FWIW I've used plasma for well over a decade with NO BURN IN from bars. I've seen plenty of plasma sets with no burn in - even in some cases poorly abused sets in video game shops stuck on brightly lit attract screens getting away with this.   Plasma screens with burn in do exist but it sounds like you are too paranoid about this. Poorly set up plasmas with over bright display and older models could suffer.
Used with care a good plasma set wouldn't burn in, neither would a CRT (both being prone to this but both being worth so little today it is now of little concern). 

Beto-Music wrote:

Now LG came with a thing called nano cell, and to bring it top spot they showd the new angle view and the old (now the old is narrow while in old times they said it was 178 degree). And it have motion blur, since they add filter to try harp portion of the image that get motion, but we know that it's a waste, since sharp a very blur image prior to blur do not real make much difference.

HDR it's a lie, since it only works with HDR prepared video, while older videos will look worse than in CRT (fro dynamic and health glossy). Nut manufacturers put the TV DEMO running HDR, and people think it's nice, but then arrive in home and the non-HDR video will look murky, faded, unless they clipand crush things.

TV manufacturers marketing bends the truth. This doesn't mean that there aren't real technical improvements per generation. You have to look past the marketing BS. 

Beto-Music wrote:

IPS it's another lie, since it still get darker and faded as angles of view increase, but the darkning and fading happen in a more homgen way. ANd if look by close distance the edges and borders looks darker than the center.

Not a lie, what a silly word to use. IPS is better than regular TN panels in this regard, period. 

Beto-Music wrote:

And 4K (or way worse to 8K) it's a lie. ANother lie...  Wel, to start most films are finished in 2k, and the 4K editions are interpolations wiuth some sharpening, to create a fake 4K. It looks somehow better than 1020p because the compression kill details in 1080p, and for 4K the details killed will be for a smaller pixel.
And if you get close enough to see all 4k details you will be too close, making the center quite brither than the corners, a uneven lightr distribution. This disturbes me even for a PC monitor, since the sides are always darker then the center, and if youy move you head to the side (slide) the side (now cenbter for your eyes) will became brighter than the center and than the another side. A mess...

Now for a 8K TV... to start it will be no much better than a uncompressed 4K, since they imagine no ne will be so close to TV and will reate a compression and bitrate based on that, that will kill most details between 4K and 8K resolution. And people will never look to this TV close enough to see the details (even if the signal digital had it).

That's why I came to the conclusion this ibndustry of home video it's a huge bull s...

Still waiting, in 21 century, that someone creates a digital TV that do not get on my nerves !!!!

But even a TV free from such anoying things wouldn't be enough, since all TV chanels have digital artifacts of video compression, poor bitrate, banding... It's anoyning. Even most blu-ray disks have some of it.

I will agree that there is a lot of marketing bull around 4k and HDR colour, as there was with 3dTV. The addition of these virtually useless resolutions is annoying frankly. Most people sit too far from a TV to fully resolve 1080p detail, let alone anything more. Your obsession with viewing angles leads me to suspect you've only spent time with cheap LCD TVs - colours and contrast from high quality IPS panels should be pretty decent off axis, unless looking at extreme angles. This is totally different to cheap TN computer monitors.

Another point to consider is the incredibly low power consumption of modern LED LCD TVs compared to older models.

I guess I made this post for others, I don't believe I can persuade you but who knows.

Last edited by Key Fumbler (26-10-2019 14:04)

Re: If was pianoteq to say it... people wouldn't forgive.

Nobody's going back to CRT, that's for sure. It seems that Beto is in extreme minority, so I would just expect things to stay as they are. The masses are buying and are satisfied, that's all the manufacturers need to know. That's how the game goes and how it always was.

IPS is not a lie indeed, it's a very substantial improvement over TN displays, and you cannot refute this since all those improvements are measurable.

Last edited by EvilDragon (26-10-2019 12:11)
Hard work and guts!

Re: If was pianoteq to say it... people wouldn't forgive.

I take pictures on a slide film.  Then I look through the projector illuminating with a halogen lamp.  This path has absolutely nothing digital.  The process gives pleasure.  After viewing the slide, all other means of display are just a way of delivering information, but not pleasure.

Re: If was pianoteq to say it... people wouldn't forgive.

IPS it's just "LESS WORSE"...
The screen still get quite darker as view angle increases...
I saw a IPS advewrtisement on yout, and the advertise was showing something very good, like a solution the the damn view angle problem. But in reality, a IPS TV, for me, on stores, was more like a typic LCD than the video advertisiment.

I know how to calibrate LCD/LEDs. I doid it to my monitor, trying to get all dynamic range of the graduation bar (black to white), but it could not get all the black tones near dark and all the brught tones near white, since the dynamic range it's niot up there. Even with low contrast and low brightness it could not get it all.

Low backlight make the image fadded. High backlight do not increase clipping, since it's the light itself and not a digitral filter adjust. Contrast in digital filter it's different than contrast setting on analogic CRT.
All calibrated LCD/LED, up to remove most clipping, TVs I saw loked faded, lifeless. CRT do not lip the whites while we increase contrast, since it also alter the CRT tube light intensity, while on digital TVs it's like contrast adjust of Photoshopl.

OLED TVs last no long, costs 2x or 3x more, and many have motion blur, and the ones without motion blur, due afast strobe effect, have a stutter effect.

And some clipping, are also due the homologation they did to fit TVs video and internet together.
On CRT times, the CRT TV was good, films and DVDs looked great in contrast in a good Sony TV. But on a CRT computer monitor they looked faded, and if we use the DVD polayer software to adjust contrast it would also clip the whites. That's because CRT TVs and CRT computer monitors had different contrast standarts, one being a high contrst display and the other a lower contrast display.

I once saw a 1080P CRT (flat screen in horizontal and vertical)  in a film LAB with digital FX, I once visited. It was fine for compouter images, but for video from telecines made for TV in HD, it looked like in the times of Power DVD on CRT computer monitor

Everywhere I see a LCD/LED TV it loks ugly. Evertime and everywhere for all LCD/LED TVs I saw in my life.... Angles it's a laways a problem, and if the image do not look fadded it look clipped for whites and shadows.  Only HDR video overcome, or nearly overcome the fadded/clipped problems, but it require videos made on HDR while the best CRTs had good look without need video made on HDR.

Last edited by Beto-Music (26-10-2019 18:17)

Re: If was pianoteq to say it... people wouldn't forgive.

Maybe for technicolor dye tranfer prints.
Color films, even modern film stock, can't get 100% saturation for primary colors. Color film projections (chemical films) on 35mm, are copies from a dupe made from a dupe (Camera negative >>interpositive>>internegative>> print). So they lost quite a information and colors in the process. Print film stocks are not good ass fine grain films stocks, and high speed film printers do not have high quality as step printes.
Today it's not a practice to make copies (hundreds) from camera negative since iot would worm it out.

Color film projection on cinema theaters alsways looked somewhat fadded and with some few poor shadow details.

But digital media... I always saw banding, poor gradients, missing tonalities in shadows, blocking. I suspect people growing without it (such details)will miss something in brain development.
And even a uncompressed HD film would still not have all details since they use to apply grain reduction and other filters that turn image detail softer or fuzzy.

scherbakov.al wrote:

I take pictures on a slide film.  Then I look through the projector illuminating with a halogen lamp.  This path has absolutely nothing digital.  The process gives pleasure.  After viewing the slide, all other means of display are just a way of delivering information, but not pleasure.

Last edited by Beto-Music (26-10-2019 18:19)

Re: If was pianoteq to say it... people wouldn't forgive.

I've been enamored by the beauty of the best examples of film as much as any videophile, however digital video clearly has massive advantages and has resulted in awesome improvements in wildlife photography in recent years.
Sure something like Baraka (filmed on rare 70mm film) is beautiful but today even the BBC can afford to capture exquisite images with super fast digital cameras with incredible stabilisation technology. 

Also the average lounge TV is much better than it was in the days of the CRT owing to the advantages of high definition digital and digital broadcasts.
While some TV programmes were filmed in 35mm for distribution in the past the vast majority of TV was filmed on poor quality analogue video. Digital and high definition has raised the bar for TV productions.

So arguably digital has raised standards for the many but detracted from the beauty of the best of analogue, which becomes inevitably more expensive year on year.

Look at the cinematic aesthetic of some premium TV dramas today and compare them to any period before this last decade. Digital TV has raised the bar.

Re: If was pianoteq to say it... people wouldn't forgive.

Digital media...

35mm could keep the negatives for a long time.
Digital media... people take most photos using cell phone, with poor quality, except the modern expensive models, and don't use to print photos, but just place on Facebook or Instagram. Most photos ends (or will) lost forever.

Most HD channels have poor bitrate, and some are just a bit above SD resolution in terms of true image details, since heavy compression kill most details of image when during some motion. For me most HD channels looks like a interpolation of a ideal DVD (480p) into 1080p. Fine detail and textures are washed away during compression unless they use maximum bitrate encoding.  And it shake my nerves when on a channel the details come and go, come and go, with minimal motion, since motion make things harder for encoding. For exemple speckles in the face in a close up, in a channel here, a actor moved very slow the head, and compression vanished the speckles, and just after the low moviment stopped the speckles appeared again, after 0,4 seconds or so.
For me such things are garbish. This "give and take off, give and take off"...

HD camera have some video look, not close to film. Film, even 35mm, have more resolution in motin than steady frames, due the effect of grain, since grain vary in position and this give some extra detail in motion. Indeed IMAX made use of a technology similar to the one created by John Lowry 16 years ago or so. They analyze the grain along many similar frames, and try to extract more details. Imax use it for the 4K version of The WIard of OZ (1939).

The demos I saw, a year ago or so, about 4K video cameras... It looked fuzzy, not sharp, more like HD than true 4K. But if the sensor of the camera have native 4K, they will market it as 4K, no matter if the final image have a very lower resolution than true 4K details. And most sensor need to have the double number of lines to produce a perfect 50% of that resolution. For example. A 4K sensor is required to produce a perfect 2K image, in terms of details (not considering dynamic range). 
That's why a cell phone image in antive resolution looks worse than a a image shot with the double resolution ( measured in lines) and then converted to the resolution of the first cell phone.

I will never forget the new Mad Max movie in a "HD" of MGM Gold channel, in a digital mini sat antenna System on Brazil. It looked fadded, (TV plus Channel standart setting), and during motion the image becamne worse than HD, since all details vanisged. It was like during nearly no mtion the image (HD channel and advetised as a HD movie session) looked more close to DVD, and during moton looked more close to VHS. It was one of the msot disgusting things I ever saw in my life, since iot was a disgusting image and a disgusting freak lie.
And people pay to such garbage services. Are people crazy????????????

Watch until the end, how even youtube maximum bitrate can't keep good details in some situations : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Rp-uo6HmI

At least I'm not the only person on world to notice such things and understand.

Digital video compression will never look good. Not with the actual system.

Last edited by Beto-Music (27-10-2019 17:21)